Lexicographer Samuel Johnson: Bookended by Poetry

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), the great lexicographer, wrote three great works that influenced English language and literature even to our own day. The Dictionary of the English Language (1755) served as the pre-eminent English dictionary through the 19^th century. The Plays of William Shakespeare (1765) gathered together and identified all of the plays of Shakespeare into one authoritative edition. And The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (1779-81) was the authority on the nation’s poets in the period up to the end of the 18^th century.

That work on the English poets was one bookend of Johnson’s professional life. I found the other bookend, the one from the beginning, while on a visit to the Samuel Johnson House in London.

Like many writers and poets who came to London in the early 17^th century to make a living, Johnson wrote for literary journals, freelanced wherever he could, and generally scrabbled by while he looked for success. His first success was actually published anonymously – a long poem entitled “London (1738),” based on the Third Satire by the Roman poet Juvenal.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Painting: Dr. Samuel Johnson, oil on canvas by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1772); Tate Museum of Art.